Retaining wall construction in Salinas CA - a wall that holds and drains

Most calls start with something you can see, like dirt washing onto the patio after every rain, a back yard too steep to use or an old wall that's started to lean. The price turns on the wall's length and height, the type of wall, how much digging and gravel the base needs, how the water gets carried away and how easy it is to get material into your yard. The schedule turns mostly on the ground we find once we dig, any engineering the wall needs and whether a permit is involved. My written estimate lists the work, the materials and the reason for each, so you can see where your number comes from.

My first question on any retaining wall is where the water will come from, behind it, above it or from a leaky line, and we plan the drainage around that answer before we pick a block. If your lot needs an engineer's design because the wall is tall, carries a driveway or slope above it or sits on doubtful ground, I'll tell you up front rather than after we've started. Then our crew marks the line, digs the base trench down to firm ground and replaces anything soft or wet with packed gravel, because a wall is only as straight as what it sits on. We set the first course dead level, build up from there, backfill behind the wall with drain rock as it rises, run the drainage the plan calls for, cap it and clean up.

Some walls don't need replacing at all. If you have an old brick or stone wall that's still straight but worn at the joints, masonry restoration is often the smaller and cheaper fix. And if you're leveling a yard to make room for a patio and a place to sit by a fire, we can plan fireplace installation along with the wall so the footings and drainage work together.

Whether your retaining wall needs a permit is the city's call, and I won't guess at it. Permit Services at the city's Permit Center reviews, issues and inspects building permits, so we check your wall with them before we dig. When a permit is needed, we handle the application and the inspections with the city, or with the county office if your property falls under it, and we keep you posted on where it stands.

We're based in Salinas and work in the cities around it, and the calls from Prunedale and Monterey sound a lot like the ones here, a bank cut behind the house, a yard that needs terracing or an old wall leaning out. On older lots we look for sprinkler and drain lines near the wall line too, because a slow leak behind a wall soaks the soil just like a hard rain.